It’s a groundbreaking discovery to understand that all addictive behaviors, regardless of their severity, share the same root cause: the mind in a state of chronic anxiety. There’s a lot of work to be done on ourselves, perpetually, and so we begin. Expand the mind with knowledge on this subject. Go as deep as you can.
Let’s look closer. We are born with anxiety mechanisms to make sure we get what we need. When those needs aren’t met, when there’s a constant state of fright, a lack of consistent love, and dozens of other circumstances, the human develops in a state of CPTSD, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s just a fancy term for what is really a human condition. It has been around since the very beginning. We simply understand it far better today, and there are far more solutions now than ever before.
So it’s a big deal to understand that our central nervous system and our reactivity sit at the root of the problem. And at the root before that are the experiences of our lives and the nature of our unique personality.
The work of developing abstinence from an eating disorder, or any addiction, begins with learning more about the nature of our childhood circumstances. At the same time, we learn to evaluate what our nervous system is like. We dissect our different anxieties. It also helps to understand how prevalent anxiety has been throughout human history. We probably didn’t talk about it until recently because we didn’t understand neuroscience the way we do now, and because there was so much shame around it, instead of simply recognizing that every creature with a brain has anxiety responses.
People are just very smart, and our anxiety responses can freeze us, because we ruminate. We develop habits and patterns, and when those patterns turn destructive, we call them addictions. Those are the things we have to learn to quit.
Once you learn a little about the nervous system and the techniques to regulate it, breathing exercises and a whole host of long-term regulation practices, the work begins. I’ll cover many of them in depth throughout my writing, spread across these blogs in different categories.
If you’re a person with high degrees of anxiety, welcome to the human race. Most people you know experience the same thing. They just have different coping mechanisms.
Keep reading.